Generational wealth differences

[KeenGreen]

My first AIBU so let’s see what I’m in for!

First to make clear none of the problems now are the fault of previous generations. It is not a blame game!!

So AIBU to be frustrated with the rhetoric that todays generations of young families have it no harder than previous generations in terms of wealth and they just need to be more frugal to have the same standard of living??

I am sick of hearing the idea that older generations. So called boomers (for the record I don’t like this term) didn’t have it easier than younger generations.

I am 38 I have worked since I was 16, lived independently since 17. Put myself through university all the way through to PhD. My husband is 39 works in a school as support staff (LSA) and takes up circa £1200 a month. He has a degree.
I work in a university and earn just under £50K before tax so our household income is probably about £65K not the lowest by any stretch but enough for us to struggle to balance costs. We claim child benefit but otherwise no extra help.
Husband only works term time of course, but that means he’s around for our child during holidays.

We have one DC age 5, and can’t afford any more.
Our closest family lives over 2 hours away, so we have no family support with childcare or help if there is a sick day or anything.

We have a mortgaged small semi detached 1930s house with 3 bedrooms, It needs a lot of work but we haven’t been able to do much because of time and money. Current mortgage fix ends in 2026 and I expect our mortgage repayments to go up by about 50% extra £300 a month.

We pay off student loans and my pension contributions are also high.
I took only 6 months maternity leave because I couldn’t afford to go to half pay for long and not into no pay at all.

My husband had virtually nothing in his workplace pension because of low earnings.
Mine is keep being devalued because of sector changes and it’s definitely not the best pension in education. (Teachers pensions are better).
I can’t even imagine what it will be like to try and live off my workplace pension alone and I would have to go all the way up to retirement age which I can’t imagine myself doing in a stressful job.

Retirement age for us is currently 68, that means we have 30 more years.
But with the way things are going I have no hope that there will be a state pension at all for us, or the age will be pushed even higher, so will probably be dead! Despite the fact I will have been paying in with tax national insurance for 50 plus years by that point.

I just feel frustrated about this idea that I hear people say that our generation just needs to work harder, or get better paid jobs etc because it’s not that easy. We both work hard in the education sector. Enjoy our jobs for the most part and find them fulfilling albeit stressful at times!

Like I said not about blaming previous generations for the picture we are in, but I don’t like the rhetoric of ‘well interest rates went up to 15% in my day’ etc when house prices were so much lower in proportion to wages and the cost of living right now and inflation over the last 10 years shows wages haven’t increased in line with this.

ps I know we are not the most hard done by! But still feel the pinch and we certain don’t live an extravagant lifestyle!

But that’s the thing,

I think your generation did work hard and I’m not saying otherwise, but so do we. My objection was to people saying all our problems are we make poor choices like having a Netflix subscription 🤣 And we have it easier.

Plenty of people have pointed out mine and DHs decisions have landed us here.
My DH feels he is not in a position to be working in a different way or environment. For the reasons explained. So we feel we are doing our best with the circumstances we have. Equally we also make sacrifices and live within our means.

But what about others in a similar position? Our generation is hurting, future generations will be worse as well.

that isn’t what she said.
any need to be quite so unpleasant (and inaccurate) in your responses?

Where does the belief that everything is so awful come from? Looked at objectively this generation is doing very well - yes people have to work hard, they don't get everything they want but on the whole we're healthy, haven't had a war recently (rare in historical terms) have access to education etc etc. This doom and gloom attitude really bothers me - we are the adults at the moment, how this generation turns out is up to us!

I don't for one moment think that today's generation can't buy a property because of take out coffee and netflix. In many parts of the country it's down to the salary multiplier and property prices. House price inflation has been brutal.

BUT so many of your posts refer to your generation hurting and you feel personally hard done by.

Many of us are pointing out that your DH has a degree and chooses to work in a valuable, but low paid job, without any career progression. You have stated the reasons for this. But surely you have to see that many are saying that it takes two people to work full time with career progression to have a good standard of living in today's world.

You also have stated there are many DIY jobs around the home that you can't afford to do. But your DH could pick the slack up here and do some of them himself during school holidays/weekends. Yes it would take self tutorials for some of them, but some are perfectly possible. I'm not suggesting he replumbs or rewires the house but he could have a go at replastering etc as has been demonstrated by others on this thread.

I didn't say or suggest any of that @BeGoldHedgehog . You assumed all of it. Factually we did inherit from DMIL, and we are passing it through a generation to help our DC buy first home, plus a second grandparent's estate, and some more to top up the pot. It won't be anything swanky that's for certain.

I hope we shan't need much residential care.(as do we all) but we're young-ish at 68, and in good health. And we have planned pensions and retirement savings since we were 30... because I was once an analyst in the pension business and did most of the NYC stockbroker qualificiation .

So there's another reason many youngsters today, who want to buy their own home struggle. When we were saving for our first home, it was the 'done thing', to live at home until we got married. The vast majority of people who wanted to buy, did this, and wouldn't have been able to, if they rented as you did OP, so it was their choice, as it is of young people now. You simply can't expect to rush in and live together in a rented home, as well as saving, it simply doesn't work that way, which is why many of the current 'younger generation' (forgive me, I haven't got a clue about all this gen Z and all that stuff, lol), are now staying at home with their parents, until they've saved enough to put down a deposit. The way my generation would look at your lives, is that when we were young, we weren't expected to constantly go to Costa for a coffee, have a Mac Donalds, a mobile phone, internet, etc., so all that money which youngsters expect to spend on sundries like that now, weren't around in our time, which is why we could afford to save, if we chose to do so. It's simply different times, and it does rather piss me off that 'Boomer's' are given such a hard time, and believed to have had everything easy, we definitely DIDN'T! When the mortgage rates went up, we struggled just as people are struggling today. When I had my first child, we only had electric heating, and he was born in November, the first electric bill, 3 months later was for £110, he's now 47 years old, and that was an absolute FORTUNE in those days, we hadn't got a clue how to pay it, but my DH and I gave up absolutely everything, that month so as not to get in debt, he couldn't even afford a newspaper!! So, please people, don't believe everything you read about us having it easy!

I’m not sure the trope is that “boomers hate their kids”. I think it’s always been that boomers are a selfish generation that wouldn’t put their children’s needs ahead of their own and had a less involved approach to parenting. Mumsnet seems to have an older user base, and so that isn’t generally accepted to be the case, but seems to be more of thing elsewhere with younger people online.

You only have to look at rent and mortgage prices.
Stagnant wages and rising inflation. Pay rises way below inflation if at all.
Rising costs all over the place.
The expectation that we need to work more for less and for longer with no guarantee of any retirement at the end of it.

I have friends similar ages stuck in the renting trap still, can’t get a foothold on the ladder.

I am so grateful for our country that has the NHS but the doom and gloom comes from feeling like that’s falling apart, that education is in crisis, these important public sectors are struggling and councils are going bankrupt. Who fund libraries, parks, and services which enrich our lives.

I worry for the next generations where if we continue on this trend will be worse off.

It’s a way off but I don’t know I am going to afford to support DS with driving lessons, university costs (as we earn too much for full maintenance!) deposit for a house etc

I am worried about the state of the world environmentally as well.

So yeah if I think about it, it feels quite doom and gloom!

This man is earning not an awful lot more than half minimum wage, because he is doing a part time job in terms of annualised hours. He's barely paying tax. As he works in a private school, he works three weeks a year less than a TA in a state school even.

It really is that simple. It's maths. TA is a part time role.

OP, have you both considered him working in a childcare setting in the holidays? Somewhere he could take your DS with him?

We went through a tough financial period and took in lodgers and foreign exchange students. Did we enjoy it? Not really. Was it fun balancing that with FT work and 4 kids? No. But it got us out of a hole and paid off some emergency credit card debt. Never thought we'd need to do it, but life can be rocky. Google "how to make money with spare room" or similar and see if anything takes your fancy. It might help pay down your student loan, mortgage or top up your pension. Good luck.

I definitely don’t believe it was easy.

I just don’t think we have it easy either.

I hope my son will live with me when he saves for a deposit etc as that will be the only way. I mean he’s 5 so who knows.

But this wasn’t an option for me, I didn’t chose to become self reliant at 17 and put myself through my A levels and beyond.

If I wouldn’t have I would have gone to uni at 18, and accepted my offer, but as it was I had no where to live in the holidays and my loan didn’t even cover my fees. Prior to first round of top up fees, and I couldn’t claim based on my income because I hadn’t been independent for 3 years.

I'm not illiterate thanks.

And why have you brought benefits into this?? I don't recieve benefits and nor am I in social housing. Do you think everyone who disagrees with the way things are in Britain are because they are impoverished?

I think we can look into it when DS is older.

He is in reception, and it would seem holiday clubs start older 5+

Im not sure how DH will feel about it though! He will likely say he can’t do it because of his MH

Boomers DO NOT HATE THEIR KIDS. I am one. And I am a bit soppy about making life pleasant.

Put their interests ahead of mine.... that's interesting. We are currently in the process of passing down both sets of grandparents' estates to the DC to ensure they have a secure roof over their head. Both DH and I managed that without any family assistance, and we have achieved financial security but under (retrospectively) quite benign circumstances. Also, I would claim that we were actually very lucky to read the right article at the right time and very sensible to act on it quickly. It was the world I worked in then, and 20 years later I find myself still managing complex pension situations. I'm neither an accountant nor a lawyer, but I am as intellectually able as either, and I worked in pension funds and investments for several years.

Don't you think that the younger generation would like to be rewarded for their own efforts and not dependant on the bank of mum and dad. Has this ever occured to you??

We do technically have 3 bedrooms.

The third is a tiny box room, not even sure I could fit a single bed in there, it’s my office space.

I work from home occasionally but also work in evening and weekends and have evening webinars etc.

Im saying its impossible but would be mightly inconvenient, not to have a space I can shut a door on.

DH would totally object to a lodger too, it would set his anxiety way off, home is his safe space.

@KeenGreen to be honest you feel as you do because you have a H with a very valuable but low paid job- yet you yourself earn quite well and no doubt are over limits for any top ups-

To be honest the person I would feel somewhat peed off with for struggling somewhat is your H , and his lack of ambition , not blaming others -

It's fine to have 1 of you in a position to be around more for children etc but unless one of you isa pretty high earner it will always limit spending power.

Where was I inacurate?

The thing is, OP, people of many viewpoints keep making valid practical points about your husband's earnings, and you keep valiantly taking it on the chin and trying to deflect it with your own efforts and achievements.

Nobody is blaming you. You're doing fine. 💕

I think in your heart of hearts you must be getting tired of bearing this load alone. It must be very frustrating, but I think you are being too nice to him. How will you feel in another ten years if your child is 15 and doesn't need childcare, he's still playing at working, and the situation is the same?

I think you should probably reflect on this. Please don't be Cinderella in your own marriage, far too many of us are.

I totally get this perspective.

It can be frustrating for sure. I feel I have pushed forward and he’s stayed still.
It also feels like a lot of pressure, I live in fear for if something happened to my job etc especially the way universities are going.

I have let go a lot of the frustration over the years. DH isn’t ambitious that’s just not him, I have learnt to accept that.

He is chronically feeling like he can’t do more, no matter how supportive and encouraging I have been.
He struggles with social anxiety, but we suspect it’s undiagnosed autism due to other factors as well. I genuinely believe he masks most of the school day and supports the children and focuses on that. He enjoys his role finds it fulfilling and is good at it.
This is a person who can’t make a phone call, due to the crippling anxiety, years ago wouldn’t even contemplate applying for jobs, he has come a long way in so many ways.

Do I wish he was in a better paid role? Of course!
I would love it if he were a teacher, or anything really to help share the load.

But ultimately he is happy and it offers us some balance family wise, I support him as I know he is trying his best and he takes care of us in other ways.

@BeGoldHedgehog well, you "surmised" and "extrapolated" quite a lot from what I wrote, but that's fine because I am a big girl and a veteran of SM forums. Also, I/we are relatively comfortable with the life we have worked to build; we don't need our parents' money because we made our own, so we are sending it down a generation, to help DC who are facing an even more precarious future than the 1990s (which wasn't much fun either).

@OP I think your last post is incredibly kind and understanding and very generous to your DH. But I do understand why you might feel frustrated too. Best of luck x

I don’t recognise this picture really. My parents, their friends, my uncles and aunts- all boomers, all working class, or maybe lower middle. No inherited money, no inherited priveledges anyway.
I’ve heard lots of stories from lots of them about flats they rented ( in various parts of the world) so I don’t know that everyone in the 1960s and 70s really did live with their parents up until marriage?
My own parents had a series of rented flats before they bought in the 70s.
And it’s so silly to harp on about Costa coffee and mobile phones or whatever. Again, my parents house was 10k in the 70s. On average wages. And my dad was in the pub two nights a week, never mind Costa! No one on 2 average wages could buy that house either a 10% deposit now.
I really don’t know what older people insist on denying it was easier. My mum could see it, my aunts can see it. It’s not blame it’s just fact!

Stating that the boomers hate their kids, that the poster was worried about her properties, reading into the text that she hadn’t received an inheritance from her mil…

I agree.

But OP I also think you have to manage your expectations of what you can afford under these circumstances.

You now mention you want to be able to afford a deposit for your DS's first property in the future etc. This is not necessarily realistic given what your DH does for a job. The only people of my generation who have gifted decent deposits for their children's properties are all high earning, high achieving people who have or do work in really very stressful and demanding jobs that pay high wages. Or those that have taken significant risk many years ago to build up successful companies with all that entails.